As 25th anniversary of Sivas Massacre approaches, executives of Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Association (PSAKD) had a meeting with the governor of Sivas, Davut Gül. Art Secretary of PSAKD, Özgür Kaplan stated the governor told them "If there would be chants against the president and government police will attack".

On July 2, 1993, a cultural event was about to be held in Sivas, a district of Turkey in central Anatolia, together with the participation of several left-wing authors, poets and bards. The event was organised by PSAKD. Several organised reactionary people had gathered in Sivas before the event, distributing leaflets targeting Aziz Nesin, a famous left-wing short story writer and one of the participants of the event, for translating Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses into Turkish.

The reactionary mob, around 5 thousand people in total, gathered and set fire Madımak Hotel where the participants of the event were staying, chanting slogans like "We want sharia" and "Sivas will be the grave of Aziz Nesin". As people were being burnt alive, the security forces did nothing to fend off the attackers.

Although Aziz Nesin was rescued from the burning hotel, 33 people were burnt alive on that day.

The Sivas Massacre case was abated for timeout and the lawyers of the attackers are now deputies and mayors of the ruling AKP government.

Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) in its statement, said "The aggressors are not held responsible for what they did. Instead of being declared as a crime against humanity, the ones that were in front of court benefited from timeout decision. The attorneys of this case are now either ministries or parliamentarians from AKP today".

Stating TKP is sharing the grief of the massacre, the statement ended as follows "All obstacles in front of Alevis that disables them from living and praying in accordance to their belief and values should be removed. Mandatory religion classes should be banned. Religion part in the identity cards should be removed."